Bail-denial Ruling Settles For 2d Best

On any given day, about half the inmates in American jails are there because they cannot make bail.

They have not been convicted of any crime. They are presumed innocent. And they are still behind bars.

That is because they don`t have the money for bail. But, now, even money might not be enough.

The Supreme Court ruled last week that bail may be denied to certain people who might be considered a danger to the community.

And though civil libertarians are howling, this probably will go down as one of the more popular rulings the Supreme Court has handed down.

There are no stories that outrage a citizen more than those about criminals who commit terrible crimes while out on bail.

I remember the case of Hernando Williams, on bail for rape, who went out and tortured and murdered a woman. Williams later was convicted and sentenced to death.

It is pretty easy to say that if Williams--and scores more like him--had been kept in jail in the first place instead of being given bail, his victim would be alive today.

It is so easy to say, in fact, that this is exactly what the Supreme Court is saying.

Defense lawyers are not pleased. They say the centuries-old principle of presumption of innocence is being thrown out.

But the court says the protection of the community can ``outweigh an individual`s liberty interest.``

And, therefore, when a judge is faced with a bad guy who has been charged with a crime, the judge ought to be able to say: ``Bad Guy, you are not going free on bail to prey on the community again.``

But how does a judge know who the bad guys are?

Not everybody charged with a crime is a bad guy. Many are innocent. And we cannot lock up everyone charged with a crime and hold them until trial. We don`t have nearly enough space.

So the judges must pick and choose. Wisely, of course. And based on the best available guidelines.

About 15 years ago, in studies by the National Bureau of Standards and Harvard University, those guidelines were studied.

But first it is interesting to note that the bureau`s study showed that the amount of bail crime was ``extremely low.`` It is not a major crime problem in America.

The bureau and Harvard studies then took on the real problem of what is commonly called preventive detention: predicting future criminal behavior, especially behavior of a violent nature.

You play the judge. The first thing you go by is the crime the guy is charged with, right? If he is charged with a serious crime, he is more likely to commit another serious crime if released, right?

Wrong. The studies showed that the type of crime a person is charged with provides little indication of whether he will commit another crime.

Okay, so let`s see if the accused is an upstanding member of the community. Two classic standards used by judges are whether a person has a good employment record and whether he has spent a long time in his community. But, unfortunately, such standards were ``unreliable`` in predicting future crime, according to the Harvard study.

So the Harvard study set up a ``danger`` scale using all the commonly used standards to predict future criminal behavior: former crimes, mental illness, juvenile record, use of weapons, prior prison terms, use of hard drugs, years of education, income level, marital status, military record, arrests for drunkenness, etc.

Using a point system, the study tracked the cases of men released on bail. And the five most ``dangerous`` criminals, according to the point system, did not go on to commit another crime.

And by using the ``danger`` scale, for every three people who would have been properly jailed to prevent crime, seven would have been wrongly jailed.

The study concluded there is no good way to predict whether a person is going to commit another crime.

So judges are going to end up keeping a lot of people in jail on the false presumption that they will be a danger to the rest of us.

Is there a better solution? Sure. And the Supreme Court knows what it is: If we tried everyone within 30 or 60 or even 90 days of when they were charged, bail crime would be virtually eliminated.

This is called speedy trial; it is guaranteed in the 6th Amendment, but it is rarely found in America.

And that is because speedy trial is difficult to achieve. Locking people up is easy to achieve.